the wrong stitches?

a fascinating aspect of the experience of sharing my great grandmother's quilts in an exhibition at my beloved little museum is the conversations with those who stop by. many of those conversations are magical, as i point out details on the quilts - like the light circle in the middle of this photo that has a dark circle of fabric on it, where my great grandmother sewed together a small piece of fabric to make up the circle - ensuring that nothing went to waste. or the fact that many of these fabrics were actually flour sacks that came in colorful calicos. here in denmark, people are a little incredulous at that, as apparently they only came in white or natural fabric here. 

a number of people i talked to, including the other person whose quilts are part of the exhibition, have expressed some surprising things. multiple people have said that we are showing the wrong side of the yoyo quilt above. we are most definitely not, as i know which side my grandmother considered the top side - and it's as it is above. the way that people tell me this is quite condescending, as if i'm a small, dull child who doesn't know back from front. and yet, this is the beautiful side of the yoyo quilt. 

the other surprising thing is how judgy people can be. there are four of these unfinished quilt tops that are perfect little 2x2-ish squares. they are completely hand sewn and they are the ones my mother remembers helping sew. her grandmother had had a stroke and couldn't get around, so she sat in her bed with piles of squares around her and sewed them together. and now, 80 years later, some danish ladies who otherwise know their handicrafts, inform me that she sewed them together wrong. they look utterly perfect to me, but her method was apparently a different one than the one they know, and so they characterize it as wrong, rather than being interested in a different technique. and it rather amazes me how much they seem to want to tell me this.

and it has me thinking about the slow stitch movement i followed back in the old bloggy days. they were that way too - very judgemental and condemning of those who did things differently than them. i wonder where the need to do that arises? why not just be fascinated by the way my great grandmother did it? why the need to judge it and deem it incorrect? why can't we embrace the amazing world of handiwork and appreciate the stories that we stitch into the cloth? why not be in awe of a woman who had had a stroke, but who could sit in her bed and stitch together small squares into perfect patterns. i know i couldn't do it. i love making quilts, but i need to lay them out and look at them and move the squares around and walk away and come back and move them around some more before sewing them together with my sewing machine. i am in awe of what she could do. and while i am interested in how she sewed it together, i don't think it could possibly be the wrong. after all these quilts and quilt tops are all still here after nearly 100 years, so she must have done something right.

 

stitch: waiting

i bought one of kaye turner's lovely pieces a couple of weeks ago and it arrived early last week, but with the dreary weather, i never felt the light was right for properly photographing it. it's a piece that kaye made last winter and she called it waiting. and at the point where she was making it, i was also waiting. waiting for my new job to begin, waiting to see what kind of a farm we would find, waiting for our house to sell (still waiting for that, tho' there is a glimmer of hope at the moment)....waiting and waiting and waiting. and so when i saw the piece on her big cartel site, i snatched it up. i'd been wanting one of her pieces and this one just felt like the perfect one for me.

i've been fascinated by the so-called slow cloth movement and i wrote last winter a few times about the slow cloth facebook group, which i felt both strangely compelled and repelled by - because it seemed like it was an awfully hard group to break into and be welcomed. especially if you, like me, are rather into contemporary fabrics and have a great deal of affection for your sewing machine. you'll be glad to know i've largely stopped checking out what's going on in the group gotten a life and moved on. but i'm grateful to the group because i think it's how i met kaye (who is really named karen). i've been reading her blog and she mine and she's a flickr contact as well. and i love the insight that gives into her process and her art.

i'm showing you bits and pieces of the piece because the detail is what drew me to it. there's a house. there's a compelling and rather map-like symbol that may have eyes on it and a nordic sun symbol. the tones are muted and fit that march period in which it was made. there are some vibrant orange and burgundy threads in it, adding splashes of color, but for the most part, it's quite neutral in tone.

earlier this year, i bought a beautiful stitched piece by jude hill, who may be the very soul of the slow cloth movement. that little cloth, with its flying trees, is magical. but karen's piece is magical in another way. while i feel privileged to own one of jude's works, this piece by karen feels more like it was meant to be mine. like it was made for me and has now found its way home to me. karen is also waiting to sell her house and move, so in a way, we had parallel story lines at the time it was made.

the piece holds up well to scrutiny and the more i look at it, the more meaning and symbolism i see in it that i feel applies so much to me and my life. the little colorful bed of X-es makes me think of the garden we've begun here at the new house. and my eye is drawn back again and again to the map-like circle, with its different landscapes and that peninsula in the center. i love the luminous little stretch of brilliant red.

when you pull back from the map-like circle, it resembles a head as it has a neck and "body" below - and the shape of that body reminds me of the driftwood people that husband and i have made. it seems to be peeking in from the side in a way, as if popping in from the future to reassure that what's ahead is colorful, since that side of the piece has the most color. the nordic sun symbol within a square is something my father-in-law would have appreciated, so it makes me think of him. there's just so much here. and i'm sure it all meant something else to karen, but it's just so dense with meaning for me. i just can't escape the feeling that it was meant to be mine. there are details that i don't know yet what they mean, but i feel certain it will become clear to me as time goes on.

i'm getting quite a few stitched pieces now - sophie callaghan's beautiful petra doll (thanks spud!), my beautiful stitched pillow from elizabeth. my own breakthrough eye pillow that resides on our bed. i'm not sure yet how i want to display karen's piece. with the house half falling down, i think a proper place for it will have to wait, which is probably just fine in light of its name...waiting.

how can i find myself if i wasn't lost?

"you can find yourself, sometimes,  in the things that make you most uncomfortable," i read this morning on jude hills' spirit cloth blog. she was talking about winter, but the comment resonated with me. i think because of my ongoing inner difficulties with the slow cloth facebook group. the arrogance evident in the group continues to get to me. i week or so ago i started a discussion thread, asking people to introduce themselves, so we'd know who we were in dialogue with. a few people have, but none of the founders or "big names" in the group have, giving me the impression that they are disdainful of the little people like me. i realize this is a reflection of my own feelings and it's probably more that they haven't noticed or don't care to introduce themselves, thinking they're famous enough that they don't need to. but for some strange reason i let it bother me. and equally strangely, i continue to stay in the group, to see what conversation is taking place, despite how it makes me feel. perhaps i'm trying, as jude says, to find myself in that which makes me most uncomfortable.

stitched up: what does quilting mean?

last week, i happened to go to jude hill's big cartel site at exactly the right time to be able to, at long last, buy one of her beautiful spirit cloth creations. and it arrived already yesterday. it must have taken the first flight it could, because it seemed to get here very quickly. i think it knew how much i was looking forward to it.i've mentioned jude's spirit cloth blog and photostream before, because i have been drawn back to her work again and again for awhile now. i love the insight into her process that she shares on her blog - it's definitely magical.

as i sit here and write this, with the cloth here on my lap, i feel it radiating a quiet magic. i've had a half-written post on the topic of this quilting thing in my head for several days now, but it didn't really want to come out. now that the cloth is here, it seems the words are ready to come.

i joined jude's slow cloth group on facebook last week. there is a lively discussion going on there, but i'll admit that i ended up feeling very provoked by what was being said. especially by what was being said about contemporary quilters and quilting materials. there seemed to be a preference for old fabrics over new and hand stitching instead of sewing with a machine. a decided prejudice against what's marketed and an attitude towards quilt shows and popularizing quilt designers (tho' no one dared to name names) that i can only describe as haughty. i found myself feeling strangely angry about some of what i read (i must stress that it isn't everyone in the group or even everyone in the discussion - and jude is marvelous at redirecting the conversation onto a thoughtful and more productive track). but some of it seemed arrogant and elitist. there is actually one person who said they couldn't stand the rotary cutters many people use for cutting fabric. and another who was criticizing what people did with their quilts and how they hung them - as if they weren't their own to do with as they pleased. i was overwhelmed by a sense of irony that the conversation is taking place on facebook - the use of modern social networking to have a conversation about a return to traditional handmade quilting. hmmm....

one of the participants in the discussion, linked to this blog post about what quilting is today and what it once was (in this person's opinion). and i think the post sums up nicely the anti-commercial thread that's in evidence in the facebook group.  also ironic, because if you start to look at the blogs of the participants, you find that most have an etsy or big cartel site and some even sell through galleries, so they are, in fact, selling their work, even as they express disdain for those who do so. i'm not sure if i can make that fit together very well.

and while it would be wonderful if we could all sit in our cocoons and create to our hearts' content, the reality of the world in which we find ourselves is that we probably need to sell some of the things we make. selling not only supports our creative habits, but it also validates us if we're honest about it. and it brings us joy. i feel so happy and satisfied that my friend blanca wanted to give baby quilts that i made to some of the babies in her family for christmas. and while the financial side is nice, what's actually even nicer is that my friend liked my work enough to want to give it as a meaningful gift to someone she loves.

anyway, i guess i have this quilting thing and what it might all mean on my mind these days. on my mind as i contemplate cutting into sabin's baby's clothes to be able to make her a memory quilt of her life thus far. on my mind as i made blocks for christmas for husband's daughters to have memory quilts of their own--of our travels and our times spent together. on my mind as i contemplate the wonderful handmade quilt husband's mother made for him--a mixture of blocks he designed and traditional blocks. on my mind as i try to decide what to do with the beautiful, bright quilt top that my great grandmother made.

i'm finding it a bit surprising, the strong emotions i feel about this whole thing. there is something about stitching. something that feels connected and grounding. but i honestly have no objection to using new fabrics, just because they're popular. when i look at the quilt top that my great grandmother made, i see bright, cheerful fabrics that i'm sure were the popular ones of her era. so to use the new and beautiful fabrics i see out there seems to me to be quilting in her spirit, even if i do most of my sewing my machine and am quite attached to my rotary cutter.

i think one of the magical things about quilts is that they are very representative of their times. they are quite literally the very fabric of their time. and i don't see anything wrong with that. as i look through the book about swedish quilts that i found a few months ago, i see that the same was true then. so, i'm going to hang out in the slow cloth group and see what i can learn, because there are some real artists there, even if some of the group is a bit elitist and disdainful (despite a lot of talk about mentoring). i'm confident i can hold my own. and find my own stitching voice. but i do think that having an incredible piece like jude's story fragment beside me as i do it will help. thank you jude, for giving in a bit to the commercial side and sharing your beautiful work. i will take good care of it.